Return to old stamping ground

Camera IconCologne Cathedral in Germany.Picture: Stephen Scourfield The West Australian

More than 40 years ago, I went on my first international writing assignment.

I arrived in Germany, notebook and Canon camera in hand, Scheidegger portable typewriter in my backpack, to follow the Rhine.

Today, I arrive with notebook and Canon camera in hand, Macbook laptop in my backpack, to again follow the Rhine, this time on a river cruise ship.

But it is all familiar, as if I’d just stepped out, forgotten something, and turned and stepped back into the moment.

I think now I am supposed to write that the only thing that has changed is me, but I can’t.

Forty years ago, I was a naive country kid who wanted to be a writer and photographer.

Today, I am still wide-eyed and surprised.

I am reminded of the words of author TS Eliot, who walked the Malvern Hills as I did as a boy: “We shall never cease from exploration and the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

Even the world around me, as I write this, seems strangely unchanged in essence, if not in detail. There is a chill in the air between the US and Russia reminiscent of the Cold War. When I was here 40 years ago, I was travelling between the British Royal Air Force Germany air bases along the Rhine, as it happened, with Pearly Kings and Queens who were fundraising there, invited by the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, one of the biggest fraternal organisations in the UK, which had branches all through the bases.

Its motto is: “No man is at all times wise”.

Buffs work to help members and their families, and other charitable organisations. It all fitted very nicely with the Pearlies, who wear mother-of- pearl buttons on their suits and dresses (many handed down over many generations) and raise money for charities. Their equally compatible motto is: “One never knows”.

The Pearly Kings and Pearly Queens originated in 1875.

Henry Croft, who was born in 1862, raised in a Victorian workhouse orphanage in St Pancras, London, left when he was 13 to become a road sweeper and rat-catcher. He liked the flashy clothes of the apple sellers, or costermongers, which were decorated with rows of pearl buttons to attract buyers. They talked Cockney rhyming slang — something still alive in our office when I worked on magazines based in Walthamstow, E17, in the old East End of London.

Camera IconThe Pearly Kings and Queens arrive in Germany from England, coming off the ferry.Picture: The West Australian

Croft was inspired by the way the costers looked after one another. He collected money to help the orphanage that had raised him, and then hospitals and organisations that supported the deaf, dumb and blind. Croft’s memorial statue is in the crypt of St Martins in the Fields church in London.

The Swan Bells, in the Bell Tower on the Swan River foreshore, rang there for nearly 300 years — for England’s victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588; for the coronation of every British monarch since King George II; and for the homecoming of Capt James Cook after his voyage of discovery, before being gifted to the people of Western Australia.

I am an ambassador for the Bell Tower and Swan Bells and feel very privileged to have been the recipient, in 2009, of a 43-minute 1260 Grandsire Doubles peel, rung for me.

My connection to rivers runs deep.

I can’t recall his surname, but the key organiser of that first assignment along the Rhine was a Buffalo called Bill.

The Pearlies and I dilly- dallied along the Rhine, spending most of our time at RAF Brugen, which had opened in 1958, and closed in 2002.

Jaguar jets, replaced by Tornados in 1984, screamed overhead on low-altitude training over the bases. This Anglo-French attack aircraft could fly at up to 1699km/h and climb to 9145m in 90 seconds.

Harrier jump jets joined them in the air.

The RAF bases at Bruggen, Wildenrath, Laarbruch, Geilenkirchen, Gutersloh and Jever were established as part of Britain’s occupation of the Rhineland after the Second World War. By the time I was there, they were maintained within the RAF’s commitment to the defence of Europe during the Cold War.

But despite the politics of our world, the writing and photography live on for me. Creativity lives on.

The words of Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor spring to mind: “Nobody remembers who was the king when Beethoven lived”.

Fitting enough, given that the Iranian Government (not its people) are seen as players in that “Cold War brewing”, and that Ludwig van Beethoven was born on the banks of the Rhine, 30km away in Bonn, which was then in the electorate of Cologne. His Dutch grandfather was music director of the electorate, as this was then an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Romans had been the first to recognise the value of this excellent position by the Rhine, which remains a busy and important transport route.

And, in very recent years, it has boomed as a boarding point for river cruising.

A spokesperson for Cologne Tourism adds: “The newly designed Rheinauhafen docks are a particularly special highlight. The historical dockland quarter of Cologne now boasts a new shopping strip with numerous galleries and cafes.”

Just as I did four decades ago, I stand before the Gothic overstatement that is Cologne Cathedral, overlooking the Rhine — the city’s hallmark.

Camera IconAbove, Cologne Cathedral in Germany and left, one of the Pearly Kings, at the Royal Airforce Base Bruggen on the Rhine.Picture: Stephen Scourfield

It was built because it was felt the previous church on this site was not splendid enough to house the remains of the three wise men who had visited the baby Jesus.

It is believed that Bishop Rainald von Dassel brought them here from Milan in Italy in 1164.

This cathedral’s cornerstone was laid on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, in August, 1248, and the two big towers were later completed in 1880.

The Shrine of the Three Kings is said to contain those remains of the magi. They are in a triple sarcophagus, gold gilt and behind the high altar.

It is the biggest reliquary in the West.

In the Ashgabat National Museum of History two years ago, I was told the three wise men (“three wizards”, as they are termed here) were Zoroastrians. Ashgabat is in Turkmenistan — a country likened to North Korea, but with the added complexity of bordering Afghanistan and Iran to the south.

In Iran in 2016, I followed the trail of Zoroastrian belief through ancient Persia. Heaven and hell, judgment day, angels, the fight between good and evil.

Waiting for three days after death, to see if there might be a resurrection. A phrase from my Christian childhood, of priests leading the penitence, acknowledging sins “in thought and word and deed”. Three kings from the east bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh — Zoroastrian magi coming to the baby Jesus.

I have followed the trail of frankincense in Oman. It was brought by these kings from the east, along with gold and myrrh, for its antiseptic, purifying qualities.

I bought frankincense for about $50/kg from a souk in Nizwa that was full of it — whole stalls devoted to varying quantities and qualities.

Frankincense is obtained particularly from hardy Boswellia sacra trees, which grow in the south of Oman, where it is green and forested.

Camera IconDoorway in Oman.Picture: The West Australian

They are tapped by slashing the bark, and bleed a pearl-white liquid which sets into semi-opaque resins which might vary from a fittingly deep red to golden colour. Omani frankincense is said to be the best quality in the world.

Frankincense is said to represent life in Judaic, Christian and Islamic faiths and was mixed with oils to anoint newborn infants. No wonder those kings from the east brought gold, frankincense and myrrh.

After visiting the newborn Jesus, the Bible says simply that the Magi returned “another way so as to avoid Herod”, and they do not reappear.

Varying beliefs about what happened next include a story that they were baptised by St Thomas, who was travelling to India.

I’ve travelled Kerala in his footsteps many times.

St Thomas, the doubter, brought Christianity to India in the first century AD, long before it reached Europe, and founded seven churches in Kerala, the first being 50km north of Kochi.

I first went there much more than a decade ago.

The first European Christian church in India was built here in 1503, and 70 per cent of India’s Christians now live in South India. The Church of St Francis has passed through many denominations, but is now Church of South India. It was once the resting place of Vasco da Gama. Long canvas punkahs (fans) hang over the pews, with ropes leading out through holes in the walls. Punkah wallahs sit outside during services, pulling the ropes, swishing the canvas, cooling the congregation.

The sound of social cricket on the open ground next door spills in through the open windows in late afternoon. In India, always the colourful sound of cricket.

But Cologne Cathedral is steeped in the belief that the three kings’ remains were found by Saint Helena, taken to Constantinople, and eventually brought here by Bishop Rainald von Dassel.

It has made Cologne Cathedral a hugely important pilgrimage site, drawing people from all over Europe.

Britain’s application to join what has become the European Union succeeded in 1970, though French President Charles de Gaulle had feared British membership would be “an American Trojan horse”.

The UK is, of course, close to leaving the EU.

But scientists recently revealed evidence of a much earlier, more geological form of Brexit.

Britain was once connected to Europe by a land bridge between Dover and Calais, in northern France, but researchers now think a big lake overflowed 450,000 years ago, damaging that link and then flooding what is now the Dover Strait.

They have discovered the scars of these events on the floor of the English Channel.

It is described as a defining event for north-west Europe — a chance event which, had it not happened, would have meant Britain was always part of Europe, whether they liked it or not.

Exactly 40 years ago, on that first international writing assignment, I was not aware of many of these things. I was just a young chap with notebook and camera in hand who wanted to be a writer and photographer.

It may be I am not at all times wise, but I do hope that the end of all my explorations, physical and philosophical, will be to arrive where I started and know the place for the first time.